Windows 7: Very loud and scary noise from my PC.

I as far as I can remember have never had this loud noose before, but lately for a month or so? Ish? I've been having a series of loud noises from my pc, so loud that I can hear it even when playing BF3 with a headset! And so violent at times I can feel the keyboard vibrating lightly, and if I touch the PC it is vibrating decently softly.

I may be wrong but it seems it started after BF3, and thought it might be the fan or my PC really struggling with the game, but it does it even when I'm not playing.



It's sometimes just a softer sound, then will accelerate to a "burr, burr, burr" then go full auto into "brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" occasionally very loud.

So here's the REALLY scary part: while playing Skyrim a very weird thing happened: it stopped. The sound of the game looped into a "drrrrrrrrrr" and I had to hold down the off button. Nothing else did anything. I rebooted and tested it again...sure enough: 30 seconds in I had to do the same thing. I gave it one last chance and decided I would try to discern if it did anything else notable, but the third time it was fine. I left the game open a while to see if it'd do it again, but it didn't.

So I'm scared. WTH is wrong with my PC? BTW it is kinda low on disc space...if that matters. Also the disc options are gone when I click on documents under the c\ drive and stuff...then again I had installed virtual drives...I dunno

It's a windows 7 64bit 3.2 ghz i5? Or quad core. GT230 graphics card. And I "it stopped" I meant my pc. Not the noise. The monitor just started going as if it were preparing for screen saver mode.

Could be a bearing in one of the fans causing it to stop then over heating. Only way to tell is take the side of the case off & check it out.

Going to be hard until you start to rule things out.

Only 1 way to know for sure, start the process of elimination. It`s more than likely a bad fan.

So...why did Skyrim make me restart with the buttonhold of do twice though? My PC overheated and couldn't take it?

I really hope it's just the fan...

If it's the CPU fan or the Graphics card fan, overheating of one of those critical components could explain the lockup. If you think its one of the case fans unplug them and see if the noise goes away. Booting into the BIOS setup menu is a safer bet for testing than booting into windows. If you go to the right menu you can check your CPU temps and fan speeds. As a quick test you can momentarily put your thumb or finger on the center of a fan and stop it from turning, just don't touch the blades or you could end up with a cut finger. If it is a noisy fan the noise will stop when you stall out the fan.

While you're at it, check for wires that are too close to any fans and might touch the blades, possibly get caught in them and stop the fan dead.

But from the sound (no pun intended) of things, I would actually guess it's the CPU fan.

What about power supply fan? Its fairly large so my account for the vibration.
Could also cause a lockup if a voltage drop occurs on one of the rails I guess.

That's definitely true, good point.

Well...now I got bigger problems: Skyrim makes my pc crash permanenly after 2 mins in game. I started a thread but it got deleted for some mystical reason.

I'm pretty sure the brrrrrrr noise happens then too. So basically my pc is overheating? Is this bad or just an annoyance? Anything I should do?